


Running on Empty

by palettesofrenaissance



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Gore, Dark Fantasy, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Halloween Challenge, Horror, Inspired by Corpse Bride (2005), Minor Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, just in the beginning to set things up and a tad bit towards the end, my first halloween/horror finally!, this does not end like the summary may make you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:41:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palettesofrenaissance/pseuds/palettesofrenaissance
Summary: Which is better: death or the ever-after of immorality? Depending on who is asked and their feeling of self-importance, the answer will vary. Although take note: immortality does not preserve one’s health.Controlling the fate of someone is a direct defiance of the natural order of things. However, this is something our story's protagonist will have to learn, the hard way on the day they visit a white mansion down in Louisiana with walls that breathe, and the witch woman who lives there, offering them help for their significant others.But, of course, nothing in life can ever be fully planned.[ PROMPT - Whichever movie or show you want to (for a halloween fic)! Or if you wanna do marvel then maybe petermj or thorkriye? ]
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Sif (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Thor (Marvel), Loki & Sif (Marvel)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Running on Empty

**Author's Note:**

> _I am finally doing my first fic for Halloween and horror. This has been a longtime desire of mine so I am glad I am finally able to get it done._

Which is better: death or the ever-after of immorality?

Depending on who is asked and their feeling of self-importance, the answer will vary. Although take note: immortality does not preserve one’s health.

* * *

It must be reminded that controlling the fate of another is a direct defiance of nature—of fate, of the natural order of things, of human free will, of decay.

However, this is something Valkyrie will have to learn, the _hard_ way.

This desire to defy is sparked the day she’s bent over her love, crying in anguish and defeat and _regret_ , her tears falling into his dirtied blonde hair. Her fingers, beaten and bloodied, press into the tarnished armor on his shoulders. His right arm is missing, as is an eye. A creature’s enormous claw had torn a gash through the abdomen of his armor, and there’s a dark red trail connecting the opening of his chest to his blue lips from when he’d coughed up his lungs of blood.

Somewhere down the burned, battle-worn clearing, a rat gnaws on the severed foot of a comrade. There are wrists with hands still attached here, helmets with heads and eyes rolled up over there. Blood speckles grass like morning dew. A follow soldier approaches Valkyrie from behind but she swats the hand away. When her love is taken from her, intent to wrap him in cloth and prepare for a funeral, Valkyrie claws and fights to keep him near. At the least, they respect her request to fix his injuries for view.

Alternately to death and fate, which are irreversible and uncontrollable, some humans journey to attempt to deny nature, driven by the powerful emotions of sorrow, fear, or grief. They become desperate, and then blind, and then _intoxicated_ on the false belief that they can have the ability to _play God_.

And Valkyrie—soldier for years with muscles and will of iron—is no exception, because she too is only human and falls prey.

* * *

It takes her less than a week to find the location.

It’s a mansion, imposing, chalk white, and appears loomsnuminously beneath the shade of the coloring Louisiana trees. It seems to creak and sway in the slight breeze, half breathing, half _alive_ , and Valkyrie has second thoughts for a moment, for a minute, for the entirety of three minutes she’s standing on the porch with hands squeezing her cellphone and the wrinkled, worn piece of notebook paper containing this address—and she _still_ wears her wedding ring, its weight continuing to feel like a pound instead of grams—until the front door _swings_ open. The woman who answers looks utterly disinterested and entirely _bored_. And then she takes in Valkyrie’s oversized knitted sweater—a man’s, size large—and the dull sheen of drying, leftover tears on her face, and the glint of her ring in the high afternoon autumn sun.

The woman smiles. Her fingers curl around the white door—there are symbols tattooed on her knuckles, real agate jewels in her ears, her smile lines deep and falsifying her age. She opens the door for the widow and there’s something in her presence, in her demeanor and aura that makes Valkyrie tingle, makes her vibrate with _warning_ and foreboding of _danger danger danger_.

Valkyrie swallows down her doubt. Her voice trembles as she introduces herself and her situation.

She doesn’t catch the small shrunken head hanging high in the corner of the porch, nearly indistinguishable from the other season-appropriate decor. Or, how it had been turning slowly, watching her since she stepped onto the property.

Valkyrie is welcomed inside with opens arms and a warning. She ignores it.

* * *

The house, nor the woman it belongs to, is a witch—let’s get that straight; not a witch or something like one.

“This isn’t voodoo or hoodoo or whatever it is that you thought it was. This is a blatant, rudimentary performance of pushing nature out of line; to bend and control it. You understand that, right?”

Valkyrie nods. “I do.”

The room they are in is completely empty—tall, white painted wooden walls and polished brown floors; no picture frames, no bed, no doorstopper in the corner, nothing—save for the materials the woman brought in. Six lit wax candles, infused with oils and herbs, sit in candelabras at various corners on the aged wooden floorboards. Valkyrie was told to hold a dark stone in one hand, told it was formed from magma and represents death. In her other hand is a small dipping bowl of water she’s told represents life, in this situation; she sits cross-legged on the floor. Earlier, she’d been told to drink something that left her stomach warm like alcohol. The woman has drawn various symbols onto Post-Its sized pieces of paper that are positioned around Valkyrie. She stands outside of Valkyrie’s perimeter holding a lighter in one hand and the patch of hair from Valkyrie’s husband that she’d been able to sneak.

The room is dim, its emptiness menacing. The walls stretch.When she looks out ahead, the floors seem much further away than they truly are. And, when she closes her eyes, Valkyrie could _swear_ that she’s floating.

“You do know this is a very potent act and I cannot foresee its outcome, don’t you? This can only be activated by _your own will._ Meaning only _you_ will be able to control the outcome of this and anything afterwards. I have no part in anything beyond this point.”

“I understand,” Valkyrie sighs.

“You said you haven’t yet ordered an embalming, correct? So his body should still be completely intact.” There’s a trimmer in her words but Valkyrie chooses to ignore it.

“I did.”

“Alright then. These agreements serve as our contract,” she’s warned. “Speak it into the stone. And then, tell it your desires.”

Valkyrie does so. Afterwards, she kisses it for good measure.

The wooden walls expand in inhale, shrink in exhale. The woman speaks words that slither into Valkyrie’s ear and twists her mind and construct her throat. Valkyrie tries to concentrate on the tattoos on the woman’s moving fingers, but the world blurs—

And then it blackens.

* * *

Valkyrie wakes up cold, which isn’t particularly unusual. She’s oftentimes been scolded that she should wear socks to bed to prevent it and avoid pressing her freezing toes onto the sweltering calves of her husband.

But there’s a sort of coldness that seeps to her bones, spirals to her core, and she feels _forced_ to take a hot shower before anything else.

The scent of cooking sweet bread welcomes her when she exits, and, fearing her place had been broken into, throws on clothes and races downstairs with a brandished switchblade stiletto knife. But instead of an attack, she freezes. Her husband is in the kitchen, _alive and breathing_ with his back turned, attempting to form a large heart by pouring pancake batter into a greased frying pan. A growing stack of failed attempts sit on the counter. She doesn’t register that he’s awfully quiet.

His name gets stuck in her throat. Her ankles carry ten-ton weights as she struggles to come closer.

He does a small fist pump in the air once successfully forming a perfect heart. The early morning sunlight shines golden through the half-opened blinds, seeming to make his hair glow and partially blinding Valkyrie. She believes this is a hallucination, or a dream. Her feet struggle forward.

He flips the pancake and she’s finally able to call out his name, it more of a squeaked whisper.

He turns; he looks _just like he had_ before it all. Her knife falls to the tile.

He smiles. “Good morning, honey.”

Valkyrie bawls.

He sets the pan on an unlit burner and wraps her in his arms. This causes Valkyrie to wail with relief and her legs to give away.

The sun shines in the kitchen. She tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear and hugs him tightly until her arms ache, and then she clings more.

A fly had found its way inside. It isn’t noticed that it crawled out from of her husband’s ear, nor that it flies directly to the stove and burns itself to death on the hot coils.

* * *

Valkyrie has a lot of bad habits. She knows that; she _accepts_ that; she _owns up_ to it when it becomes necessary.

She’s brash, blatant, and at times, bossy. She’s obnoxiously persistent, perverse, and incredibly loyal. She drinks and curses and makes vulgar, silent innuendoes and passes to her husband while out in public. But, _damn_ , if she doesn’t love; when Valkyrie loves, she loves _hard_.

Along that aforementioned list of blinding, intoxicating emotions, probably the most volatile is _love_ ; for, the number of backs stabs, deaths caused, and ties torn all in the name of love in infinite and ever growing throughout history.

* * *

A day later, Valkyrie phones the white mansion down in Louisiana to give her thanks, but the line never picks up. She doesn’t think further about it, believing it simply being busy, because her resurrected husband then grabs her hands and pulls her to dance around the room in to music playing. She stands on his feet and presses her face into his shirt, ebullient at his returned and effectively distracted. He burrows his nose into her hair and inhales deeply, too deeply. His body temperature feels cooler to the touch. His heartbeat, whenever it is, is too faint.

* * *

Nothing arises her suspicions in those next one and a half weeks, either.

She ignores his lack of hearty appetite due to his recent Lazarus experience. She excuses his insomnia with the same reasoning, and optimistically looks at this side effect as beneficial to now having someone to house-watch at night for security measures—they do not live in the most ritzy or risk-free neighborhood with a neighborhood watch and in close proximity of a fire station.

Valkyrie doesn’t have suspicions in the coming weeks because she doesn’t _see_ them. She welcomes her husband’s typical doting behavior, and they fall back into _normal_. Or, what can be considered as normal for them, now.

* * *

The first person she tells is her longtime friend, Sif, on the second week but the reaction Valkyrie receives is—

It’s disheartening. Discouraging.

Sif _denounces_ what Valkyrie has done. She calls Valkyrie’s action ill-thought, un-explored thoroughly, and short-sighted. She wishes her friend had come to _her_ instead, first, and repeats what Valkyrie has been hearing from _everyone_ since returning with her husband’s blood soaking her clothes: that she’s being guided by grief, that her mind is twisted by a hurricane of emotions, and it would be better for her to _speak_ them with another rather to _act_ on them, foolish and impulsive.

But while Sif’s scolding is good-meaning, Valkyrie takes offense. Sets her Long Island iced tea down with a thud that rattles the silverware, pulls her jacket closed with one hand, and with the other, points a finger at her friend, accusing Sif of intending to discourage her.

“Why can’t you just be _happy_ for me?”

“Because, if this is true, this isn’t _natural_ , Val! It isn’t _right_ _!_ ”

“Says the one who’d come back from the dead herself.”

“Being revived in a hospital after a minute is _a lot_ different then _resurrecting_ someone after _three days_.”

Sif rears back, staring down her nose at Valkyrie’s finger, and her eyes widen at the start of grey decaying of her friend’s fingernails.

“Val...” she starts, slowly.

But the ex-solider doesn’t want to listen and instead Valkyrie stands, biting her tongue for much of what she wants to snap back, and waves Sif off and stalks away.

* * *

Valkyrie’s husband is huge, hulking, and heavy with muscles built from years of training, exertion, and endurance. Those muscles have always provided _excellent_ force to work out all the kinks in Valkyrie’s back—just as she’s lying on their bed later that same evening. She’s reiterating her outing with Sif. Her lip curls and she feels betrayed and ignored.

Her husband presses the meat of his hands into her shoulders, coaxing a moan from her at the relieved tension.

“We should show her up,” she suggests. “ _Then_ she’ll believe. Plus, that would give you an opportunity to finally leave the house.”

His only response is a grunt.

“Wait. I was joking... You don’t _really_ stay in the house all day, do you? You don’t go outside or anything?” She looks at him from over her shoulder.

He’s leaning forward, spaced out and concentrated on the message. Because his only response is another grunt, she doesn’t think he’s _really_ listening, and so Valkyrie calls out to him again.

 _This_ gets his attention; he blinks like he’s brought out of a trance, then smiles brightly and like nothing has happened. “Sure, Val. When do you want to meet her?”

She raises an eyebrow but decides to not press on it. “You want to go this Saturday?”

He forms a fist, presses the side of it into the meat just under her shoulder blade. “Sounds good.” He pauses. “What’s her name again?”

“I said her name, like, ten times already. It’s Sif. Remember?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Sif. Right.” But it doesn’t sound like it sinks in. “Sif,” he repeats to himself, as if Valkyrie couldn’t hear. “Sif... Sif...”

For reasons she can’t pinpoint, Valkyrie has difficulty fully relaxing after that.

* * *

For the nextseveral day, after Valkyrie returns from work the couple play Jenga, curl up on the sofa eating junk food and binge-watching movies, and they go bowling and he beats her by seven strikes to three. They go to bars and make drinking bets with strangers that they know they will win. They kiss goodnight and good morning and he’s tells how he loves her so; he says it more now than ever.

They fall back into routine just like normal—as _normal_ as can be with everyone, including the government believing her husband is legally deceased.

Yeah, that part is a complication.

Especially when word gets out—this Valkyrie will find out later, but not too soon.

Because upon her second meeting with Sif, it’s purposely planned during a public outing _just so_ Valkyrie can display that her husband—yes, still technically, legally her husband—is a perfectly functioning human being.

“How do you know he’s even still _human_?” Sif hisses a whisper over the loud ambience, watching the man mingle with Sif’s plus-one.

Valkyrie side-eyes, hard. “You don’t stop being a human just because you’ve died once.”

“ _Died once!_ ” Sif scoffs. “Val, _please!_ Think logically.”

Valkyrie makes a face of distaste, glass beer stein pausing en route to her mouth.

“Okay. Human being _technically_ ,” Sif corrects her wording. “But whether he’s _human_ is yet to be _proven_.”

And then, Sif catches sight of Valkyrie’s fingernail in her face again—they have darkened to a grey-black, as if decayed—and her fingers have begun to thin like an elderly. Sif’s eyes widen in shock.

But Valkyrie is still put off and thus leaves to be with her husband. And, as Sif watches from afar, she can’t deny that seeing her friend _happy_ again is reassuring. Half of herself doesn’t want to press and instead allow her friend this little bit of happiness; Sif knows it is all temporary and that she will work, softer, to bring reality back to her friend. She watches from the bar as her best friend chugs down the rest of her alcohol, encourages the tree of a man at her side to do the same, and then pulls him into the crowd. Between mingling people, Sif and her girlfriend watches the couple dancing.

“I know you’re worried, but let her have this one,” Sif’s girlfriend sighs, her arms wrapped around the other’s shoulders from behind.

“I know but... It’s so _wrong_.”

She agrees. “But it can’t last forever.”

* * *

Eternity is not for the mortal. It is incorporeal and is meant to stay that way. Anything that tries to defy this is met with a ground-shaking reality check.

One afternoon, Valkyrie looks to her hands and has the itching thought that they have become much more _aged_ than supposed to. When she goes to question her husband about it, also intent on asking his opinion for dinner that day, he’s found standing in front of the living room window, shoulder hunched, and as still as a statue. But the blinds are closed and he isn’t gazing outside, just remaining still like a robot whose batteries suddenly ran out.

Valkyrie cradles one hand in the other like a physical comfort. He doesn’t respond to the first few calls of his name. But when he finally moves, it’s slow and creepy, only his neck turning, no other body part, and his stare is empty.

Sif’s words ring in her ears: _“What if something goes wrong?”_

_“Nothing will go wrong. Everything will be just like before. He’s as if nothing has ever happened!”_

In the living room, her husband blinks rapidly as if awaking from a dream, grins, and greets warmly just as normal.

* * *

Days turn into weeks that turn into months that turn into—

Excruciating; a growing discomfort that’s inching into _fear_ of exhaustingly overly sugared displays of affection and too sweet treats that mask the overpowering _stench_ of—

They get a phone call from his God forsaken obnoxious _brother_ and he’s disbelieving at first and then _cursing_ at Valkyrie and then threatening, no, _promising_ to take the first flight over—

And Valkyrie sinks herself into a warm bath, running her hands around each other and then down her arms, taking note of her loosened of muscles and rapidly thinning skin. She’s painted over her nails. Raising hands to her cheeks, she remembers her hallowing cheeks in the mirror. She already looks seven years older. A week ago, she’s noticed her skin whitening in various places including on one arm and leg, in patterns. Three days before, her leg stiffened out of nowhere, and it wasn’t like the static feeling of being filled with running ants, but it had stiffened like a _board_ , like stone, like a dead—

Early autumn passes and it develops into the height of the season. Valkyrie continues to go to work and comes home to her husband welcoming her with a kisses and her relax routine already laid out for her. Every weekend morning he makes heart-shaped pancakes or waffles, and each morning they’re increasingly sweeter and arriving to her colder and colder. She drifts to sleep hearing declarations of his love and awakes with him already beside her and smiling down at her. But the more she starts to pay attention to these little things, the more the small actions collect and stand out to her.

He still doesn’t sleep, and instead just lumbers around the house with his outgrown hair framing his face and eyes unblinking. Flies land on him and he doesn’t swat them away, as if not even feeling them. Occasionally, he intakes food and drink without chewing or swallowing, as if he doesn’t even have a _gag reflex_. And the spacing out—the spacing out worsens to the point that Valkyrie is beginning to believe he’s doing things _on purpose_ such as standing, waiting for her to return from a room or return from work.

But “I just love you,” is always his excuse. “I don’t want to miss another second away from you. Together forever, remember?”

Valkyrie’s eyes widen. Her grin freezes, strains. Her pulse stutters then jackhammers.

* * *

Loki declares his arrival with a fist to the door like the damn _authorities_ and Valkyrie nearly shoots his head from his shoulders.

He often forgets that she grew up in the north—hunting and North Face Shellista boots and rough winters and lawless and all. But then again, he doesn’t visit nearly as often as he _should_ to remember such things.

Loki arrives and it’s Hell on Earth. He doesn’t let either of the couple out of his sight—as word has spread about his brother’s reanimation. And, maybe it’s a good thing he does—because the next day, hyped up on caffeine to survive the night before, he’s grabbing Valkyrie by the shoulders with crazed and shifty eyes, urging that they need to leave _as soon as possible_. He waits specifically until his resurrected brother is out of sight.

Her husband pleading _“Together forever”_ and _“’Til death do part”_ echoes in her mind and she’s hit with a strong wave of _guilt_.

“Death has already come! You’ve already departed,” he reminds, clenching her shoulders. His pulsing is racing because this is the second time he’s uttered this—the first time had been in the night to the kinetic corpse of his brother.

Valkyrie thinks about the woman with the candles and her breathing house in Louisiana and the lock of her husband’s hair the woman had burned. The woman had also reminded Valkyrie of her wedding vow.

“I know,” Valkyrie answers to Loki. She feels as if it is all her responsibility, all her fault, and thus her _duty_ to see this out.

“You _aren’t_ in your right mind,” he snaps, practically shaking her shoulders.

He’s ready to curse, ready to cause a scene if that’s what will make her _see_ , but then he freezes. His own limbs ice over, and he pulls away as if burned.

She blinks and he doesn’t realize, doesn’t know _how_ she could have not noticed her one eye that’s begun turning an obvious cerulean blue.

“What makes you think that?” She asks, wearing a blue eye that’s a striking, _startling_ mirror of his brother’s own.

* * *

Loki practically _flees_ the next day.

Valkyrie questions him all the way to the front door, but he only gives short, simple answers about being “unwanted” and looks to her with wide, fearful eyes. As he leaves, Valkyrie’s husband comes up behind and her hugs her to his chest. He leans into her ear to whisper his gratitude that they’re finally alone.

That night, he runs his hands down her spine, along her leg, dipping into the back of her knee, and kisses her hair. He kisses her slow, patient, like she’s decadent, like he’s _tasting_ her. His movements are stiff and austere. She doesn’t fall into the mood, and even though it is mostly heavy touching, Valkyrie finds her eyes wondering to the wide window on the dresser, and stares back at her reflection with a man who should be dead.

There’s a healed scar on his arm where it was stitched back. Underneath his jeans and shirt, she knows there are similar scars for his leg.

In the mirror, her arms that wrap around him have grown much thinner than she’s familiar with; she hasn’t aged a day but her skin sags and is loosened like she’s sixty years old. The dim lighting within her bedroom that night prevents her from catching the clear hue of her new blue eye, or the new patches of pale-pigmented skin that’s begun covering on her singular arm and leg.

* * *

Funny thing: Valkyrie had already _known_ of the eye before Loki’s visit but the discovery had her in so much shock that she floated through his visit, numb.

It prompts her to phone the white mansion one more time. This time, the magic woman answers.

Valkyrie twirls a lock of hair around a finger, cradling her phone between her ear and shoulder, and tries to not sound like her pebble-drops of gathering anxiety over her husband’s behavior leak into her voice. So, she starts it like a casual conversation that leads to a simple “thanks.”

“I just have one question,” she punctuates, and can practically _feel_ the magic woman’s pleasant mood vanish. “Have there been any other clients who experienced unprovoked and sudden limbs deadening?”

There’s a pause. Valkyrie swallows. In her home, the floorboards creak, giving away her husband’s presence—he’s nearby; she doesn’t think he’s fully listening. Valkyrie’s heart quickens, skips as the magic woman speaks.

“No,” she answers and it hangs in the air like a guillotine blade readying to drop. “But also there hasn’t been many case _like yours_. The last one...”

Valkyrie’s twirling finger stiffens and she _hopes_ it’s a coincidence. She switches her phone to her other shoulder and ear, trying to swallow down her rising panic, her good arm holding the one that’s begun stiffening like stone and ever time, she fears it would start to petrify—it’s also the same arm that’s begun changing color.

It isn’t _losing_ color, alike vitiligo. Valkyrie’s arm has begun _changing pigment completely_. Her left ear is completely pale now and bloodshot from stress, but is kept hidden by her hair.

“What _last one?_ You didn’t tell about a _last one_ when I came and saw you.”

“The last one happened in ’38.”

Valkyrie gapes at the wall. She wonders how old the magic woman is, but she’s answered by: “That isn’t important.”

Not far from the corner, Valkyrie’s husband hears. Besides her voice, the home is otherwise eerily quiet, save for the television on low volume in the living room. He hears his wife’s dry sob from outside their bedroom, then the quickening in her breathing, and then something drop. Her fist hits something. She gasps but doesn’t cry. Flicking metal. A pause. A shakily whispered, “Oh my God.” The bathroom’s faucet running. Her speaking into the phone more.

All the while, her husband stands, unmoving and expressionless, staring at the floor without an ounce of sentiment twisting his face.

* * *

The next day, Valkyrie drives to work with one hand and the other in a sling. She returns to the hard grind with a bandage around one palm and an empty, customer service smile. When she interacts with colleagues, she tells the truth about her injury: that she cut herself with a knife yesterday. She withholds that she had done it _to_ herself with a knife of her own, fearful and then _horrified_ at the severe lack of blood that trickled out of her suddenly limp arm. It had been as if it was immobile. As if it was dead. Cold and hard as if it was emball—

When the thought buzzes into Valkyrie’s mind, she digs her fingernails into her good palm until the pain becomes unbearable and she bites her bottom lip until there are red marks that last for hours.

* * *

When she arrives home, she’s welcomed by her husband who drowns her in affection...but all Valkyrie wants is to be alone; to cover her face and scream until she can’t breathe, to take a saw to her limbs and get rid of the heavy weight. It’s long since begun pushing pins of anxiety and dread into her conscious but now it’s begun driving her mad.

And it starts to show.

He picks up on her sulking mood and does all the things he used to do that would cheer her up. But when she looks at him, she scowls. He appears more like a clown or an imposter, now, than the man she loved. None of his actions have meaning, and all of his phrases are only recited from memory. His eyes watch her with vacancy, and when they kiss, it’s cold, and passionless. Whenever he recites his love for her, it’s with urgency but devoid of emotion.

And it hits her that he’s nothing but a carbon copy.

Yet still, he insists and persuades and tries his best to make her _believe_ that he will fill any request she gives, because he can now see that she’s depressed and second-guessing and skeptical. So in the next few days, he repeats that he loves her and that they will be “together forever” per their vow. Hearing it creates a stone in the pit of her stomach. Her leg steels up.

Valkyrie begins fantasizing about taking that imagined saw to her husband as well.

But every time she gets the courage—when she’s approaching with a knife in hand, when she runs a hand down the smooth metal of a pistol—something intangible and with incredible strength holds her actions still and always prevents her from going through with the action. And thus, she begins to live in misery.

* * *

She eventually comes to terms that this is no longer her husband, but an empty corpse with his face. But, by that time, her days have run out.

* * *

Loki goes straight to Sif, knowing she’s the closest thing to family for Valkyrie since the death fo her relatives. When he tells her of his visit, she’s more shocked by his _actions_ than his _discoveries_.

“You always go about things rashly,” she criticizes around the cigarette in her mouth. “Just because you tell _the hard truth_ , as you call it, doesn’t mean people are always grateful to _hear_ it. And it doesn’t mean they’re going to always _listen_ to you.”

She’s sitting on the step outside her apartment building, one knees crossed over the other. The sky is grey with an oncoming thunderstorm. She exhales a plume of smoke.

Loki wrinkles his nose at the smell. It’s a bad habit—depression and unhealthy coping, she’d been told by her therapist.

“If you already knew,” he starts, slowly, “then why did you act like you didn’t, and got me to come here? You could have saved me the gas—”

She takes another drag. Takes her time to exhales and smell of the rain in the air.

“Because, you’re going to do something for me.”

Loki sneers. “I don’t take _order_ s—”

 _Like some mindless bootlicker just like you used to be_ , she knows he wants to snap but she speaks before he does: “If you want to save either your brother or Valkyrie, then _yes_ , you will.”

* * *

The next time Loki’s able to visit is two weeks later. Even with Sif by his side, they find out that it’s much too late.

Loki’s brother answers the front door bright, exuberant, and more _lively_ than either have _ever_ seen him since his reanimation. It immediately sets off alarm bells in their minds. It’s off-putting.

He welcomes them inside. Loki outstretches an arm in front of Sif in a warning, but she doesn’t heed and is the first to step over the threshold. Loki doesn’t miss the slight _twinkle_ in his eye as she does, it happening in one rapid millisecond.

Sif’s carrying out a conversation with the brother but he’s staring at Loki who’s still outside on the doorstep—he blinks only once, waiting, expecting.

Sif thrusts her chin to the side, silently urging Loki inside. And he wants to excuse that the knife hidden in her jeans is more than enough protection, but something in her gaze and in his gut tells that she could use all the backup she can.

Their plan is simple: to get into the house and find the contact to whomever Valkyrie had visited to perform this devilish deed. One will distract the kinetic corpse while the other searches. They may run into Valkyrie, and if so, use her answers to their questions to squeeze out any leading information as possible. Sif is even ready to show her stomach and give an apology for her crude words.

It’s easy enough, in theory. On paper.

Loki excuses himself to use the mirror in the bathroom but his brother insists for him to stay with a warning smile and a threat behind his eyes. So, he and Sif are forced to sit and listen to his pinched attempts at conversation.

It’s three minutes in that it registers just how _quiet_ the home is. Sif mentions this when Loki’s brother takes a pause—she notices his lack of inhale, that his chest doesn’t expand by his diaphragm—and she speaks her suspicions out loud. She then asks if Valkyrie had gone to retrieve the mail.

The husband nods, yes.

Then, she says that twenty-two minutes is a long time to check the mail and if Valkyrie has now gone to the store.

He grins and says, “Sure. Possibly.”

Loki’s jaw tightens, slants.

Sif nods and continues to play along.

It turns out to be surprisingly easy to fool him. He has eyes mostly trained on Loki—no doubt due to his shifty history and already hostile presence—so when Sif manages to slip off to the couple’s shared bedroom, she’s not expecting to hear shuffling and grunting from behind the door. Her blood roars in her ears. After what feels like hours (but is really only seconds) she’s silently turned the knob and cautiously opening the door.

Valkyrie is lying half dead—body paled grey and visibly _decaying_ , and the scent wafts in Sif’s face with _force_ —and she has sagging, wrinkled, premature and greatly aged skin and wrapped in white linen, like a toga, ravenously scarfing down an overturned decorative wicker basket of potpourri and shriveling flowers. (Which her husband undoubtedly picked just for her.) Sif freezes in the doorway. Valkyrie—from what she _hopes_ is still Valkyrie—stops eating and looks toward Sif and she sees that her friend’s face is worse than her rotting flesh, paired with dead, sunken eyes—one grey and blind, the other a perfectly bright and healthy blue—and in that moment, Sif realized her friend is no longer _there_.

And then it’s proven by her inhumane, garbled scream.

A line of drool falls from her dry lips. Her cheeks are hollow. Gums are rotted black and teeth yellowed. The sharp points of her cheekbones, elbows, and clavicle jut out like sticks inside nylon. Veins are clearly seen beneath her paper skin. Silky dark hair, perfectly brushed, falls around her shoulder and tangles around one dragging arm. Valkyrie tries to scramble across the bed and towards Sif, but two of her limbs are limp weight—one arm and one leg that are grotesquely a completely different skin tone, as if being stitched in place of Valkyrie’s own. Her wrinkled, exposed shoulder blades rolls as she drags herself across the neatly made bed comforters, the top of her linen tucked above her breasts.

Well, Valkyrie isn’t much of a _she_ anymore, wouldn’t you say?

Sif can’t argue that she’s very much _alive_ anymore, either. There’s no saving her—she and Loki have to focus on saving themselves.

Sif stumbles backwards, nearly hitting her back against the opposite wall in the narrow walkway and covers her mouth in time to prevent a cry of her own. Valkyrie rolls forward, dead leg dragging behind her, and Sif scurries to close the door back, hurries back to Loki.

Only to find where the men had been is now empty.

There’s a crash from the kitchen. Sif turns, runs at top speed, and the world suddenly turns in slow motion—her movements, her hair blowing into her face before gathering behind her shoulders as her head turns, the slight slip on the rug underfoot before she steadies herself with her other foot, the approach of the kitchen doorway, grabbing the doorway to catapult herself through.

Somehow, blood trickles from Thor’s shoulder. He’s grimacing in pain, gingerly touching the injury and wincing. There’s a long, thin kitchen knife in his hand—but it isn’t _him_ who’s threatening Loki, but rather the other way around.

Sif roars, “What are you doing!?”

Loki sputters, working to physically restrain himself from pressing his blade further into his brother’s neck which he has in a headlock while also fighting against his larger brother.

Loki shares that Thor had admitted that he plans to give Valkyrie “a proper burial” while also rambling about how the two will be together forever. “He _killed_ her, Sif!”

She wants to scoff and deny that it all is _preposterous_ but she remembers the state she’d just seen her friend and the body of Thor being carried away on the day he died and rules out that nothing is _too crazy anymore_.

“He didn’t kill her...I don’t think. Not...not _exactly_. But she is _gone_ now.”

The pressure from Loki blade to Thor’s throat has drawn blood. He’s straddling his brother’s back on the kitchen’s tile. Thor’s knife clinks against the floor. As he’s there, Sif is able to get a better look at him, now: he appears _normal_ , too normal, almost normal. His hair is knotted and tied back. He still has the scars from earlier in life dotting his arms and faintly on his cheeks and splitting his left eyebrow. What stands out are his eyes and arm: one of his eyes is an unnatural dark brown; his arm, just one and from his mid-bicep down, is a noticeably darker tone, very slight but surely different, as if that lone skin was set out to tan overtime.

Sif feels the blood drain from her face and a foot steps back in reflex.

One of Thor’s ears also appears to have received the same tan treatment.

All of those body parts appear noticeably younger compared to the rest of him—springy elasticity, glowing complexion.

Those were all the same body parts that have changed pigment on Valkyrie.

In a strained, terrified whisper, Sif asks to the walls, the congested air, the echo of Valkyrie’s scream, to the two men in front of her: “What the hell has happened here?”

* * *

Sif and Loki end up finding the magic woman and do their own research to find her location. Soon enough, they too are knocking on her door.

Autumn has come and gone and a new year will be rolling around the corner, soon.

Sif and Loki are less elated and are instead strictly somber when the magic woman answers the door and the duo immediately introduce with, “We are here on behalf of a friend of ours who came to you for aid...and it all had gone incredibly wrong.”

As expected, the magic woman frowns. Quickly, she explains, “My interference stops upon contract agreement,” and she starts to close the door.

Sif’s boot catches itself between it and the doorway. “We _insist_.” She’s anything but polite. “We mainly just want to know what happened and why it went so wrong.”

The magic woman looks between both of them, intensely skeptical—a tall, thin, witchy man in black and a forest green dress shirt; and a woman who is just as coarse as the grief-stricken widow (Valkyrie) who visited just months ago.

* * *

Some before their visit—whether by horrible coincidence or bad timing or both—a young man with wind-blown brown hair and a perpetually worried expression approaches the magic woman’s door with hands wringing the tourist brochure. She didn’t want to take him seriously, but under his large eyes she decides to amuse him.

She humors herself by giving him a short tour through the front of her mansion. He isn’t one who handles _scary things_ well and jumps at any mediocre, dollar store jump-scare she’s set up. He’s also very determined, she finds, as he wouldn’t let his objective go.

“I came to see if you can help my girlfriend,” he goes.

“Girlfriend? Not even fiancé? What if things don’t work out?”

He reveals that he’s planning on proposing to her anyway. “But she’s been bothered _so much lately_...and this is like the last resort because nothing else seemed to help her—”

He hears himself and apologizes under the magic woman’s raised brow and glare.

His girlfriend, MJ, has been increasingly bothered by older coworkers and her resolve has been eroded to where she doesn’t feel like she has much strength anymore. With her mid-thirties approaching, she’s also begun having her mortality on her mind. And like the loving boyfriend he is, Peter hopes that a more _supernatural_ approach will give his girlfriend the boost she’s been long craving.

The magic woman smiles and agrees to help, making a quip about how she will give his girlfriend a boost and to become the professional success and prey on those who are weak and vile. But, like some, predators, she may become _bloodthirsty_ as a result.

It isn’t much of a quip.

**Author's Note:**

> _(did you catch the nod towards vampire!MJ at the end?)_
> 
> _this whole thing started out as something inspired by The Corpse Bride but then spiraled off into something else that is much more…campy? It seems campy to me_
> 
> _so, this ending became different than what was originally planned: it would have followed valkyrie throughout watching her body decay before her eyes, her slow decent to terror, and the lack of proactive help from her "husband." opposite to her condition, thor would get physically better and more out of character (because he's dead, you know). but writing something like this would have been too much for a first time and it would have been too long for a one-chapter fic, so then I changed it to this._
> 
> _There are a few reasons why I decided to make this a Thor/Val fic instead of Peter/MJ: comparatively, thor and valkyrie fit more for how this fic ended up being like. another element is that, in the comics, thor doesn’t experience such negative compared to peter (I think) so this worked best for me. and then there is a scene with the eyes that work better with thor’s bright blue eyes._
> 
> _  
>  **with this being my first horror fic, what do you think? Was it corny? Was it alright?**   
>  _   
> 


End file.
